Cuba's international medical aid programmes are more extensive than those of any other country or international organisation in the world. Washington, fearing that such aid activities will generate increased international political influence (i.e., soft power) for Havana and thereby complicate US efforts to bring about regime change there, has responded with its own countermeasures. The primary US initiative has been the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) programme, which is designed to encourage and facilitate defections to the US by Cuban medical personnel assigned to overseas aid missions. The dynamics and impact of the CMPP programme will be the main focus of this article. Operating within a policy analysis format, the article provides a summary of Cuba's medical aid programmes. For comparative purposes, similar summary data will be provided regarding US medical aid activities. It provides detailed background information about the formation and operation of Washington's CMPP programme. It also analyses the extent to which the CMPP programme has succeeded in persuading Cuban medical internationalists to defect and how far it has undermined Havana's medical aid programmes.
Joseph Nye, 'Think Again', Foreign Policy, March 2006; available at http://yaleglobal. yale.edu/display.article?id=7059
John M. Kirk and H. Michael Erisman, Cuban Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution, and Goals (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
available at http:// www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/19/obama_summit_americas_press_ conference_96076.html
Julie M. Feinsilver, 'Fifty Years of Cuba's Medical Diplomacy: From Idealism to Pragmatism', Cuban Studies 41 (2010), p. 94.
USAID, 'Fact Sheet: The U.S. Government's Global Health Initiative'; available at http://transition.usaid.gov/ghi/factsheet.html
Lorraine Murphy, 'Medical Readiness Training Exercises Provide a Win-Win Situation', The Griffon, 19 February 2010; available at http://www.thegriffon108.com/articles/article-detail/articleid/474/medical-readiness- training-exercises-provide-a-win-win-situation.aspx
William Blum, 'Targeting Cuba's Health-Care System', Consortium News, 7 June 2011; available at http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/printer_63155. shtml
Joel Millman, 'New Prize in Cold War: Cuban Doctors', Wall Street Journal, 15 January 2011; available at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203731004576045 640711118766.html.
US Department of State, Diplomacy in Action, 'Cuban Medical Professional Parole Programme', 26 January 2009; available at http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/ fs/2009/115414.htm
Ibid.
Mike Ceaser, 'Cuban Doctors Abroad Helped to Defect by New U.S. Visa Policy', World Politics Review, 1 August 2007; available at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ CubaNews/message/120587
'Scandal: U.S. Program Against Cuban Medical Assistance' from the South Journal. Reprinted in RealCuba's Blog of 3 April 2011; available at http:// realcuba.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/scandal-us-program-against-cuban-medical- assistance
Alfonso Chardy, 'Newly Arrived Cuban Doctors Face Immigration Delays', Miami Herald, 23 April 2011; available at http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/23/2182407/ newly-arrived-cuban-doctors-face.html
Feinsilver, 'Fifty Years of Cuba's Medical Diplomacy', pp. 95-6.
State Department's Public Diplomacy website, http://www.state.gov/r/
Spencer Ackerman, 'Future of Public Diplomacy', Washington Independent, 17 February 2009; available at http://www.washingtonindependent.eom/3040/future- of-public-diplomacy-unsettled-at-state
Emily and John Kirk, 'One of the World's Best Kept Secrets: Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti', Counterpunch, 1 April 2010; available at http://www. counterpunch.org/2010/04/01/cuban-medical-aid-to-haiti
María C. Werlau, 'Cuba's Business of Humanitarianism: The Medical Mission in Haiti', Cuba in Transition: Volume 21 (2010), p. 205; available at http://www.ascecuba.org/ publications/proceedings/volume21/
Kirk and Erisman, Cuban Medical Internationalism, pp. 2-5, 67, 75-6, 85-7, and 163-8.
Quoted in Ceaser, 'Cuban Doctors Abroad Helped to Defect by New U.S. Visa Policy'.
Ackerman, 'Future of Public Diplomacy'.
Kirk and Erisman, Cuban Medical Internationalism, chapters 2 and 6.